The Slide Show

A few blocks away from the Roosevelt Mall, situated behind an old motel, you'll find a short block of twin ranch houses on a road called Leonard Street. It's no different than many other streets in Northeast Philadelphia, except for the wonderful, inescapable, happy memories of visiting my grandparents. Their house on Leonard Street always boasted beautiful roses, planted with the utmost of care by my grandfather, the man we affectionately called Pop Pop Mickey. A visit to Mom Mom Anne and Pop Pop Mickey's house on Leonard Street surely meant that my sister Bev and I would run screaming to escape the clutches of the "monster" (my Pop Pop in disguise, wearing slippers on his hands, a backwards robe and those fake vampire teeth). During delicious dinners cooked by my Mom Mom, my Pop Pop would start thumping the table, remarkably impersonating the clip clop of a horse. He's say, "the horses are coming, the horses are coming" causing me to run to the window to catch a fleeting glimpse of the horses, who, for some reason, were always gone when I got to the window. (Yes, you could describe me as quite the gullible little girl)

However, the best part about visiting Leonard Street had to be, without a doubt, the slide show. My grandparents traveled quite a bit, and Pop Pop Mickey, an accomplished photographer, took hundreds of photos, using slide film, during each trip abroad. Yet, on each role of film, he made sure to include terrific shots of Bev, me, my baby brother Steven and of course, my parents. I suspect the reasons were selfish. When showing the slides to friends, not only did my grandparents get to boast about their world travels, they also got to boast about their precious grandchildren.

I loved when Pop Pop Mickey presented his slide shows. He would set up the big screen in the living room, plug in the slide projector and prop it up on a book so that the pictures were even on the screen, Then he would insert the slide reel. Sometimes he would insert it backwards, and my sister and I would laugh at the upside down photos of my Mom Mom and Pop Pop in some far away land. He would get frustrated, take out the slide reel, put it in right and proceed to show us the memories of their latest get away. As far as I was concerned, I could care less about Russia or Israel or Portugal. I wanted to see pictures of our family! I would wait in anticipation, hoping he'd quickly flip through the vacation shots. Then, sure enough, there was baby Steven in his high chair, Bev and I at the pool at our swim club, my mom and dad at our Passover Seder.

The slide projector made a loud humming noise, and a familiar clicking as Pop Pop Mickey advanced the reel from one slide to the next. I will always remember that sound, it takes me back to Leonard Street, and to Atlantic City, where my grandparents moved when I was nine.

I cried when they left northeast Philadelphia for a destination that seemed so far away. Yet, my dad ensured the family made requent trips down the shore to visit. The slide projector, screen, and dozens and dozens of slides also found a home in the small one bedroom apartment in Atlantic City, and we always enjoyed the slide show after a day of fun in the sun on the beach!

My grandparents have long since passed away, and Pop Pop Mickey's slides sat collecting dust in my parent's garage for years and years. Finally, I hunted through the boxes of photos, uninterested in vacation footage, but longing to find those treasured memories of my childhood. I gathered 10 boxes of slides, determined to find a way to convert them to actual photographs that could be placed in an album or viewed on a computer screen.

By holding the tiny slides up to the light, I could make out the images and chose nearly 200 family photos to convert to digital and hard copy images. But how? A photo store could perform the task, at a price that would require me to take a second mortgage on my home! Finally, last year, on a flight home from visiting my inlaws, my husband flipped through the airline catalogue of Brookstone-type items that nobody really needs, but would sure be neat to have. And there it was, a contraption that, when plugged into a computer, could scan slides and convert them to digital images!!! The best part, it cost much less than my monthly morgage.

My husband Bob placed the order as soon as we returned, and I happily ripped open the package about a week later and I plugged my new hardware into the computer. I soon learned, however, that the task of downloading 200 slides would take patience, and a great deal of time. Each slide took about two minutes to download, then another few minutes to be saved to my "Pop Pop's Photos" file on my hard drive. Several months later, when all of the 200 slides of my childhood memories were now living happily on my computer, I set about the task of converting them from digital images to hard copy photos. I soon learned that this too, would be a major challenge, as each photo had to be opened, reduced in size, and re-saved in a different folder. So far, I have printed 40 of the 200 slides and shared them with my sister, brother and parents.

Today, I sat with my 12-year old daughter on my living room floor. She pulled out her scrapbooking kit, filled with cute stickers and sweet phrases, and together we began the enjoyable task of placing my childhood memories into a photo album. As I taped the former slides into the album returned back to a time when digital images on a computer would be a concept of sheer fantasy, and the best way to view a brilliant photo was no doubt, on a large white screen during one of Pop Pop Mickey's famous slide shows.

I suppose the technology you use to view an image is somewhat irrelevant. It's the memories and the emotion that bring the story of the photo to life, and in the end, that's all that really matters.

5th grade..the end of an era

June 28, 2009
As my "baby" inches ever closer to her 12th birthday, I want to do what I suspect every mom wants to do......and that is to discover some super human method for making time stand still. Or, at the very least, making it slow down, at least a little bit.

Melissa graduated 5th grade last week. Only 10 weeks now separate her from the scary, unknown, horrible prospect we in the adult world call middle school.

When Melissa watched her good ole mom get emotional at the end of 5th grade activities, she (no surprise here) thought my reaction seemed to be downright silly. If my eyes dared swell with tears during her 5th grade chorus concert, well, I would have broken the terms of the unwritten mother/daughter contract which states that I will not do anything to embarrass my child.
clause 1 - no public displays of affection toward offspring, this includes but is not limited to:
a - kissing
b - hugging
c - holding hands
d - touching a shoulder
e - generally walking within a 10 foot radius of said offspring
clause 2 - there shall be no public displays of emotion, this includes but is not limited to:
a - singing
b - laughing
c - dancing (said offspring will pretend to be an orphan should this particular rule-breaking occur)
d - crying

So, as the school year came to a close, I violated every clause in the contract. On her last day of school, I sat at my desk at work, thinking about her every few minutes, wondering if she would be emotional, if there would be long hugs from her friends, sad goodbyes, tears swelling at thoughts of leaving, laughter, parties, elation, dread....all of the above...none of the above.

I longed for answers to these questions when I dialed my home phone, anxious to hear all about the end of an era in her young life. With an air of distraction that did not go unnoticed, she dutifully answered my questions. "Yes, mom, it was fun". "Yes, mom, I saw all my friends" "Yes mom, I got my report card" "Yes, mom" "Yes mom" "Yes mom"

Then, after my 5th question (or 6th, or 7th, or 20th, I don't remember) came the crushing words from her mouth, "Mom, you're boring me. I'm trying to watch a movie."

There you have it. My little girl, the child who, as a baby, cried every time I left her field of vision, now finds me boring and not worthy of a phone conversation. So now I really don't care if time stands still or goes a bit slower, now I wish it would go in reverse.

But no matter, with each passing day comes a new adventure in my wonderful daughter's life. And even though I won't matter as much in the coming weeks (months, years...SOB!) it will still be a joy for me to watch her become a sweet, delightful young lady....even though she won't want me around.